


The Telvanni Guide to Mysticism

by Zalphon



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 12:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16534952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zalphon/pseuds/Zalphon
Summary: A Guide to Mysticism by a Telvanni Spellwright





	The Telvanni Guide to Mysticism

**The Telvanni Guide to Mysticism**

_By Sakiran Maesa, Spellwright of House Telvanni_

 

There is no school more misunderstood than that of Mysticism and that is in no small part due to the fact that it is the most difficult of the schools to master or even develop a rudimentary understanding of, except in the case of utilizing its most basic spells (such as the Intervention line, Mark and Recall, and Soultrap). This is because of a gross misunderstanding of what Mysticism is. Many speculate it to be one of the six primary schools of magic, but that does not do it justice, because Mysticism is not an equal to the other schools; it is the progenitor of the other schools. Allow me to explain.

 

Mysticism is to magic what math is to the physical world. I say this in that they are both ways of modeling what they are applicable to. In the case of Mathematics, it models the relationships between two or more things on a quantitative level, while Mysticism models the relationship between the differing arcane elements (albeit not to the precision of mathematics). Both of these fields, Mysticism and Mathematics, are incredibly pure in their existence, but even they are not the purest, as both can be traced back to their origins in Philosophy. The difference is that when they grew out of Philosophy, they branched in different directions. Mysticism branched out towards the metaphysical and Mathematics towards the physical, but both equally share Philosophy’s Curse.

 

Philosophy’s Curse is that whenever something grows out of it, it is frequently considered an entirely different subject. We see this even with the relationship between Philosophy & Mathematics and Philosophy & Mysticism. This same phenomena has happened to Mysticism numerous times and is why we have “six” schools of magic as opposed to one. While initially even the most arrogant of evokers (practitioners of what is now known as Destruction magic) grudgingly gave the esoteric mystics their due, time progressed and the role Mysticism played in the development of each of the other schools was gradually diminished until even today, there is talk of removing its study from the official curricula of the Imperial Mages’ Guild (something which I have spilled an ocean’s worth of ink in letters to the Trebonius about, as well as Skink-in-Tree’s-Shade).

 

The beginning of this phenomena dates back to the chartering of the Imperial Mages’ Guild who sought to distance themselves from the Psiijic Order and thus began promoting the idea of magic having different schools. This idea is not one I am opposed to, as it has actually resulted in remarkable research into how to produce different effects and promoted public scholasticism as opposed to the near-monastic scholasticism practiced before, but it also prompted a bit of rivalry between practitioners of the different schools. Eventually, they all wished to argue that there school was the ‘most difficult’ or otherwise superior in some equally unimportant fashion, regardless of any truth behind such claims.

 

Unlike the Conjurors, the Illusionists, the Evokers, and even the Transmuters (practitioners of Alteration magic) and Healers (practitioners of Restoration magic), the Mystics were uninterested in such meaningless squabble. While their academic brethren engaged in what can only be described as a contest of distance urination, the Mystics remained as they always had been. Students unmoved by the politics of the realm, for they were focused on things far more important than the acclaim of their peers. They were interested in truth.

 

The Mystics ended up divining truths about Aurbis and actually constructed our understanding of the Aurbic Archives. This is because unlike the Transmuter or the Healer, they do not seek to understand for reasons of practicality. Their concerns are much more academic than that. They seek to understand, because they must. The Mystic does not seek to know unknowable truths, because it will give him power; he seeks to know them, because they are unknowable and he wishes to know that which is unknowable. Unsurprisingly, many Mystics end up as the specters of Apocrypha, their souls bound to Hermaeus Mora for eternity.

 

Now that I have given a brief introduction to Mysticism and its state of affairs, I wish to explain now just what it is and how it is utilized. I have made mention to the Aurbic Archives and how the Direct Arts interface with them, but I feel that alone does not fully encompass how Mysticism functions (unlike how it fully encompasses how Restoration and Alteration function). The Aurbic Archives have always existed, but they were not always accessible. It was the Mystics of Old who actually allowed us to interface with them and they were able to do this, because Mystics do not practice a school of magic; they practice the study of magic. They are engineers of magical energy which is why they can trap the magical energies of a soul within a gem or reflect spells back at the one who harms them or even transmute the harmful energies of a spell into ones that restore their own internal reserves of magicka.

 

To put it simply, the student of Mysticism is not like any other practitioner of magic. He does not do what he does in search of power or fame, but because there are mysteries within the world and he seeks to bring a torch to them and solve them. He takes with him a quest for knowledge that becomes an integral part of his being and he does so knowing that he will likely never discover something new, and that his greatest accomplishment will simply be expanding on the ideas of a scholar who died centuries or even millennia before his birth, but that does not make his devotion any lesser. It is a vocation for few and it is one I am proud to hold, but it is not one for the mage who’s aims are the treasures of this world, but who dreams of what could be.

 

I encourage those of you interested in the study of this ‘school’ to seize every opportunity to learn more, for there is no greater reward than knowledge—especially when it is of the purest order.


End file.
